The invention is in the field of roll bars for motor vehicles, and particularly pertains to illuminated roll bars for off-road vehicles.
When traversing rough terrain in a vehicle such as a Jeep, with four wheel drive which permits operation on steep slopes, it has been found almost essential as a safety precaution to incorporate a roll bar over the cab, especially if the vehicle is open-topped. Because the roll bar is generally the highest anchor point on the vehicle, it is also sometimes used to mount high-illumination headlights, such as quartz lights. From the higher mounting points, the lights illuminate the terrain ahead with less shadowing than with bumper mounted headlights.
Collision between vehicles off road has been a real problem, especially between dunebuggies, and a number of deaths have occurred in such accidents. Despite the fairly widespread use of tall flagged antennae, too often buggies will come flying up the opposite sides of the same hill at 30 or 40 miles per hour and have a head-on collision. Such accidents are inherent in the type of terrain off-roaders prefer, and with the open, un-protected nature of the vehicles themselves.
Although obviously the use of the roll-bar mounted headlights is a lot safer than traveling in the dark, nevertheless the highly directional nature of headlights does not serve to provide a wide angle light beam warning of the approaching vehicle. Also, the white lights of the ordinary headlights tend to blend in with the lights of other vehicle lights, and in the climatic conditions of low clouds or fog, light picked up from nearby cities, campfires, and other sources of illumination render the quartz or other type of headlights inadequate as a means for other vehicles to accurately locate the position and direction of such a vehicle.
There is a need, therefore, for a lighting means on a vehicle, and ideally on the upper portion of a roll bar, which illuminates a wide area for the purpose of locating the vehicle to other drivers. Such a light should ideally come in different frequencies so that a reasonable discrimination between vehicles is possible, and such frequencies should fall in a spectral range suited for penetrating fog and haze.